“It was 1984 and I saw [Jim Jarmusch‘s] ‘Stranger Than Paradise‘ and [Andrei Tarkovsky‘s] ‘The Sacrifice‘ in 24 hours, and they both left such an impression on me,” Jonathan Teplitzky, the director of “The Railway Man” starring Colin Firthand Nicole Kidman,recently said in an indie directors round-table chat with THR. ” ‘Stranger Than Paradise’ showed how [feasible] it was to make a film, so simply and so distinctively. And with ‘The Sacrifice,’ it can be about anything. It can be about what you dream, what you think.” For interested cinephiles, those are some choice films to reference, which makes “The Railway Man” potentially an intriguing film beyond just the star-studded cast that also includesJeremy Irvine, Stellan Skarsgård and Hiroyuki Sanada.

Buzz out of the Toronto International Film Festival wasn’t necessarily stellar (you can read our review here), but we’ll admit, some of us are still very much intrigued. Based on Eric Lomax‘s autobiographical account of his time as a prisoner of war in Singapore during World War II, the picture stars Firth as victim of World War II’s “Death Railway” who sets out to find those responsible for his torture. Plus Firth opposite Kidman always sounds like a great pairing.

“The Railway Man” will be released on January 1, 2014 in the U.K. and it’ll hit sometime in 2014 in the U.S. via Lionsgate. Watch the trailer and check out new pics for the film below. [Trailer via DigitalSpy]